PICTARAMA

SARA GILBERT EXHIBITION

WE NEVER STOP PLAYING.

We just grow older. We adhere to fictitious adult rules but deep down nothing much changes. We are children pretending to be adults. Let’s embrace our playfulness. Let’s capture it and look at it with kind and curious eyes. Let’s frame it to give us distance to admire it and cherish it.

Sara Gilbert’s Pictaramas are boxes of carefully selected and precisely positioned Lego bricks. The pieces are a hotchpotch of new and played-with bricks; some rare, vintage and collectable.

The artist has assembled dioramas depicting colourful and meticulously detailed worlds of fun and irony. Sara has the uncanny ability to capture scenes borne within our inner-child’s imagination and caress it with the maturity of surrealism.

In a white frame there is Princess Constintina, a loving yet luckless womon tired of futile frog-kissing.
In a prominent black square we have a lineup of Unusual Suspects: a glow- in-the-dark ghost stands frozen scared while in the corner is a bemused Joker playing cards with a knight of the Round Table. We’ve all met a stranger mix of people in reality.

A content sherman is unaware of the shark that’s gunning for his bait. In those moments before disaster the sherman sits relaxed with his Fishing rod over the pier, bobbing in the water. Meanwhile his catch of the day is being snatched by clever gulls. When the sun sets the green reef lights up and the oceanic underworld is illuminated

The artist’s imagination is as limitless as our will to play.

Sara Gilbert started creating framed block dioramas in 2013 as birthday presents for family and friends. She received amazing feedback and was encouraged to share her carefully crafted still-life scenes with others. Each diorama is lovingly designed, constructed and bonded within a box frame.